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David Harcourt
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Posted: 13 Apr 2007 06:32 am |
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I have just bought the most amazing book.
Its title is Australian Painting Today. The author is John Douglas Pringle, and it was published in 1963.
It begins as follows (be patient, and read carefully: I think it will be worth the trouble):
"This book is not a history of Australian painting. If it were that, it would have to start with that elusive artist, known as the 'Port Jackson Painter', who sailed with Captain Phillip in the First Fleet, and whose naive but vigorous drawings of aborigines and animals still retain some of the wonder and freshness of that extraordinary beginning. (Or perhaps it should go back thousands of years earlier to the cave paintings left by the aborigines in the inland ranges.) It would certainly have to include the young Scottish convict, Thomas Watling, who arrived in Sydney in 1792; John Lewin, who accompanied Governor Macquarie in his first 'Progress' over the Blue Mountains; and many others who sketched the strange land with sympathy and understanding. There would have to be at least a chapter on the Australian Impressionists, Streeton, Roberts, Conder, McCubbin, and their later descendants, Heysen and Gruner ... Some of these men were fine artists by any standards, but they were all, in one sense, derivative. They did not contribute anything original to the sum of painting ... They did not create anything new, though they helped Australians to recognise and appreciate their own land. And they did not add anything lasting to the idea of Australia ..."
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David Harcourt
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Posted: 13 Apr 2007 06:41 am |
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And so on, for 48 more pages.
Here is a list of the 23 artists whose work is featured in Australian Painting Today:
* Ralph Balson
* Charles Blackman
* Arthur Boyd
* Lawrence Daws
* Robert Dickerson
* William Dobell
* Russell Drysdale
* Ian Fairweather
* Leonard French
* Donald Friend
* Leonard Hessing
* Robert Juniper
* Francis Lymburner
* Godfrey Miller
* Jon Molvig
* Ross Morrow
* Sidney Nolan
* John Olsen
* John Passmore
* John Percival
* Clifton Pugh
* Andrew Sibley
* Brett Whiteley
"The Mass", by Leonard French (painted in 1960)
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David Harcourt
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Posted: 13 Apr 2007 06:46 am |
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Can you see why I think this is a most peculiar book?
No?
Well, ask yourself how many of the artists discussed in Australian Painting Today are:
* male
* female
* European/white
* Aboriginal
The answer is:
* males: 23
* females: 0
* Europeans/whites: 23
* Aboriginals: 0
"Feeding the Birds" by Sidney Nolan [painted in 1948!]
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David Harcourt
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Posted: 13 Apr 2007 07:01 am |
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Is this weird or what?
There are several possible explanations:
1 - There were no female artists of any significance in Australia in the early 1960s
2 - John Douglas Pringle knew very little about his subject (there's no information in the book which provides any indication of the source of his putative expertise)
3 - John Douglas Pringle was a chauvinist dickwad: we know this because there were plenty of significant female artists in Australia in the early 1960s, but they and their art were invisible to chauvinist dickwads like John Douglas Pringle
4 - a combination of 2 and 3 above
I'm now going to try to find out more about this. My wife, whose views on such matters are Conventional Feminist c.1966, says this is all part of the White Middle-class Male Conspiracy, and anyway Australia is a profoundly sexist country. There her limited interest in the matter ends.
But mine does not. I am going to find out what kind of story is being told now about Australian art in 1960.
In the first place, much of the art represented in Australian Painting Today seems to me to be very conventionally uncoventional. It is assertively "different", like a woman in a cape, or a man in a bow-tie or a beret. As such, it is unconvincing when represented as evidence of a significant new direction in Australian painting.
Secondly, some of it seems to be highly derivative. (Item: is that a Braque I see below me? Another painting - by Ralph Balson - reeks of Jackson Pollock. And so on.)
There's a story of some kind here, and I think it should be told. Watch this space.
"The Overlander" by Donald Friend (painted in 1960)
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David Harcourt
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Posted: 13 Apr 2007 09:55 am |
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At very nearly the beginning of Australian Painting Today Pringle writes:
"... But in addition to its intrinsic merits, this sudden flowering of Australian painting has another and wider interest for the art historian."
What this sentence means - the meaning, that is, which its author intended it to convey - is this:
I am an art historian, and this is the interest which this holds for me, and would hold for you, were you also an art historian.
I have since found the following information about the art historian manque, John Douglas Pringle:
"John Douglas Pringle died in December 1999. He wrote for The Times and the Guardian, and was twice editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, a deputy editor of the Observer and managing editor of the Canberra Times."
Pringle, it would seem, was a journalist. There's nothing there to suggest that he was "an art historian" or, indeed, than he knew anything about art - anything, that is, which could not be gleaned from the cuts in the Fairfax library. Much in Australian Painting Today in fact suggests that Pringle knew very little about art. (And, before that sentence is interpreted as a Pringle-like attempt on my part to insinuate that I am at all knowledgeable about art, I must make it clear that I know very little about art; just enough to detect a flagrant poseur when I see one.)
A near-contemporary book is Robert Hughes' The Art of Australia, published in 1966. I'm going to try to get this out of the library this weekend to see whether his perspective is any more informed, not to say enlightened, than Australian Painting Today.
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jaybee2003
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| Posts: | 272 |
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Posted: 15 Apr 2007 12:13 am |
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I know I have forgotten more than I can remember about art history, nor do I particularly know about the 60's scenes, so I can't comment much on that, but I am not overly surprised by the lean of that book. Historically, recognition was a huge struggle for female artists. Back to the 1700/1800's, females were refused admission to Art Academies, many eventually permitted entry to Guilds, painting in details under direction in works of the "Master's", with no recognition.
Add (chauvanistic) role attitudes into the picture, with the expectation of marrying, domestic roles, childbearing/childminding, then the financial needs of freedom to paint seriously, and/or study, many women had it pretty tough. We saw "Miss Potter" last night; we all know how Beatrix struggled to have her work published. If she had married young as her mother expected, or her father hadn't been in a financial position to allow her to spend her days drawing and writing, I suspect the tales would never have been told. You can be sure, too, if she had been a male, recognition of her artistic endeavours and being taken seriously both in art and writing would have been much easier for her.
I seem to recall something about Frances Hodgkins' (stated by some as her) "best works" coming from a period of a few years travelling with a fellow female artist, where they both could finally focus only on their art - again for similar reasons as touched on above.
Aboriginal art: From my personal perception of attitudes towards their aboriginal peoples currently (and in general not necessarily specific to art work), I would suspect their art wasn't recognised at all by the mainstream Australian art world. I understand it is only in the last half century or so that aboriginal art moved from skin, stone, rock, bark, boomerangs and diggerigoos etc to canvas and now is hugely popular, commanding very big money. To have an original aboriginal art work hanging on your wall is very "in".
I suspect part of that, too' reflects the aboriginal people wishing to keep their legends and "Dreamings" etc to themselves. Last time we were over in OZ, I fell in love with a particular (aboriginal art) painting. It absolutely fascinated me. I didn't really understand it, but something drew me back to it time and time again. Much to my delight, the artist happened to be in the gallery and came over - I suspect to tell me not to touch it though, as I was holding up my hand to compare hand print size. I can't remember his name, but he used a trademark handprint in his art work (which true to aboriginal custom says "I have been here") - and his hands were H U G E. Twice the size of mine, and yes, I looked at his hands, and yes, I have never seen such large hands ever. He said the painting was from a Dreaming - and he would provide an explaination to the purchaser. $30,000. Needless to say, the work stayed hanging on the wall when I left. But I daresay now, it will be gracing a wall on a Sydney waterside house or an office.
Speaking of Australian Aboriginals, I was astonished to read this the other week in an article about Kiwirrkurra, one of the most isolated communities in Australia in the middle of the Gibson Desert... "In 1986, to the astonishment of the nation, a group of Pintupi people walked out of the sand-dunes here to make their first contact with Europeans."
A thought regarding development of new Australian art styles etc - considering the vastness of Australia and the "'newness"' of discoveries/aboriginal peoples and customs etc, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the period of "discovery art" or "scientific art" of scenes, depiction of landscape and people etc was longer than many other settled lands. And with such a wide range of immigrants from all around the world, was particularly eclectic and uncertain in styles.
But, what do I know. Just thoughts as I sit in the sun on a gloriously lazy Sunday morning in the Wairarapa.
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